Ahune

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The subject of this article or section is part of Midsummer Fire Festival, a seasonal event that lasts two weeks. Once the event has run its course, this will no longer be available until next year, but there are no guarantees.

During the Midsummer Fire Festival, players encounter Ahune by entering a special variation of the Slave Pens instance. A player queues for the special instance through the Dungeon Finder or by talking to a particular event NPC in a major city. Entering the instance in this way places the party in the second room of the Slave Pens, near an Ice Stone. The Ice Stone is then activated to summon Ahune.

Contents

General information

Ahune is immune to frost. Players can continually queue for Ahune, but will only receive the [Satchel of Chilled Goods] once per day. Those who kill Ahune for the first time will receive Shards of Ahune, which begins a quest. Make sure to click on the item to start [65] Shards of Ahune before leaving the area, as the quest NPC is Luma Skymother inside the instance.

Known bugs

Killing Ahune during any of phase 1 may not always spawn the loot chest, and will not count as a boss kill in Heroic Mode. This issue has occurred in both normal mode and heroic mode, should this issue occur in heroic mode you will not be saved to the instance. A highly recommended safeguard is to always kill Ahune during phase 2 to ensure the loot-chest spawns, even if Ahune is sitting at 1% in phase 1. This bug generally leads directly to another bug, in which Ahune will not spawn the Frozen Core when he submerges on subsequent attempts, making killing him impossible. It is therefore strongly advised to reset the instance if this bug is encountered.

If Ahune is killed immediately before returning to phase 1, the Hailstone elemental may still spawn and attack the party, so stay alert for that possibility. In rare occasions, the timer even keeps running and a new Hailstone spawns every 2 minutes.

Occasionally Ahune's Frozen Core spawns "inside" his larger form, which doesn't correctly submerge, making the Frozen Core difficult to target, using the "tab" key is the fastest way to target it. Alternately, assist someone with the Frozen Core already targeted.

If a rogue uses Shadowstep on the core, there is a large possibility that the rogue will get stuck inside the base and eventually be killed when Ahune respawns. Should this happen but the rogue survives until Ahune is defeated, he'll still be stuck. The best course of action is to pull another mob close to the base so that the rogue may shadowstep to it

Phase 2

Strategy

Phase 1

The base idea is simple: Kill adds until he submerges and nuke him down.
Ahune will start by summoning an Ahunite Hailstone, an elite frost elemental that will need to be tanked. It has a Chilling Aura, which applies a stacking DoT effect to everyone in close to it. Ideally, only melee classes will be affected by it. Ahune also continually spawns smaller water elemental adds that have a small amount of hp (about 13k), but hit quite hard on cloth and tend to attack whoever is on top of the global threat (which will most likely be a healer). These should be killed as fast as possible. Ahune himself only takes 25% damage during this phase. While ranged can DPS Ahune freely (albeit weakly), anyone entering melee range with Ahune will suffer a large amount of frost damage and be knocked back a significant distance. Phase 2 starts approximately 90 seconds later.

Note that all the adds are immune or substantially resistant to frost effects. Death knights may need to alter their tanking strategies on this fight.

Phase 2

Ahune will submerge and his Frozen Core will become vulnerable. Ahune continues casting Ice Spear during this phsae, but will otherwise not attack or spawn adds, even when players get within melee range. He will remain submerged for 30 seconds; everyone including the tank should dps the core as hard as possible, taking care to avoid the ice spears and not slip on the icy patches. When Ahune emerges, he will return to phase 1 and begin the cycle again. Each time he restarts the cycle he will spawn more adds, however, so you will need to kill him before the adds overwhelm your group.

Notes

No players need to be in melee range of Lord Ahune during Phase 1 as he does not move and has no threat list.

Ice is slippery; running over ice may result in a knockdown effect.

Melee need not stand directly beside Ahune in phase two. His hit box is very large and stretches to the edge of the icy ground.

Stand behind the tank; if there's no threat generation, the adds will go for the closest player.

Ice Spears may punt you into the water, likely resulting in a wipe. Try to stay on the left side of the icy area. When you see any of the following signs, you should take a few steps in any direction to avoid Ice Spear's punt effect; A glowing icy swirl, a ring of snowflakes, ice crystals near/under your feet.

In addition to this, anyone that gets knocked back by Ahune during phase 1 may find a [Pocket Full of Snow] in their inventory, which contains several [Snowball]s.

He and all his adds are immune to [Icy Touch], making it difficult for Death Knights to tank effectively.

When first added, Ahune appeared in the standard Slave Pens instance, in both normal and heroic versions. The 2010 revision to the event (increasing Ahune to level 82) moved it to a specialized instance where the normal Slave Pens mobs do not appear.